This year marks the 10th anniversary of the last World Youth Day attended
by Pope John Paul II, which happened in Toronto, Canada. The theme of the 2002 event
was "You are the salt of the earth ... you are the light of the world", and it brought
nearly half a million people to the city.
After a decade, the priest most involved
with bringing WYD to Canada reflected on its significance.
“I’ve always said
that World Youth Day is a timed-released capsule,” said Father Thomas Rosica, C.S.B.,
the National Director of the Toronto World Youth Day. “Anybody who waits for immediate
results from a World Youth Day in the six-months afterwards, or are expecting the
churches are going to be populated immediately will be terribly let down.”
Father
Rosica said WYD reinvigorates the Church in ways that become apparent over time.
“We
look for the deeper signs of the effect of World Youth Day,” he told Vatican Radio.
“That is a reinvigorated young adult ministry, pastoral ministry for young people,
university chaplaincies, renewed vocations: An awareness that the Church is alive
and the Church is young, as Pope Benedict said so beautifully in his inauguration.”
One
other concrete result was the establishment of Salt + Light Television, Canada’s first
national Catholic television network. After the success of World Youth Day, Father
Rosica was also asked to take charge of this new enterprise.
“I thought my
work was done after World Youth Day. I wanted to go away, hibernate, and take a long
sabbatical,” he said.
“The more I look at it now in hindsight and also with
the eyes of faith, retrospection, and providence, it was God’s way of saying the Church
is alive and the Church is young, because the spirit of World Youth Day has continued
in Salt + Light,” he told Vatican Radio.
The next World Youth Day will be in
2013 in Rio de Janeiro.
Listen to the interview by Charles Collins with Father
Rosica: